Chapter 5 - The Girl Everyone Was Hunting
By sunrise, Khloe’s face was on every local news station.
PERSON OF INTEREST SOUGHT IN EXECUTIVE MURDER.
The photograph was from her employee badge.
Dante switched off the television.
Khloe sat motionless.
“I’ve never owned a gun.”
“I know.”
“The police won’t.”
“We’ll prove it.”
“My sister is being held hostage. Jared is alive. Wolfe is dead. Someone framed me, and we still can’t open the drive.”
Dante crouched in front of her.
“Look at me.”
She did.
“You are not going to prison.”
“How can you promise that?”
“Because I don’t make promises I can’t keep.”
She wanted to believe him.
That frightened her.
Dante arranged for a defense attorney, but surrendering immediately would make rescuing Maya nearly impossible.
Instead, Khloe returned to the clue her father had left.
Her father, Thomas Bennett, had worked for Northstar before his death from what everyone believed was a heart attack.
She suddenly remembered his final birthday card.
He had written:
When the numbers stop making sense, go back to where your mother taught you to count.
Khloe stood abruptly.
“I know the password.”
Dante followed her gaze.
“Where?”
“My childhood house.”
Two hours later, they entered the abandoned Bennett home outside Tacoma.
Dust covered everything.
Khloe walked into the kitchen.
Her mother had taught both daughters multiplication using tiles above the old stove.
One tile was different.
Khloe pressed it.
Nothing.
She laughed bitterly.
“Apparently my father wasn’t Batman.”
Dante examined the grout.
Then pushed upward.
The tile lifted.
Behind it was a small brass key and a folded note.
Khloe opened it.
Her father’s handwriting filled the page.
Khloe, if you are reading this, Evergreen is still alive. Trust the ledger, not the men whose names are in it. And never trust Victor Kane’s son.
Khloe’s blood chilled.
“Victor’s son?”
Dante took the note.
“I didn’t know he had one.”
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
Dante immediately drew his weapon.
“Behind me.”
Someone ran.
Paulie chased the intruder through the rear door.
Dante and Khloe followed.
The man escaped over a fence, but dropped a phone.
On it was a photograph of Maya tied to a chair.
And another image.
A younger Jared standing beside Victor Kane.
Khloe stared.
“No.”
Dante’s voice was quiet.
“Jared Kane.”
Everything made sense.
Jared had not randomly entered her life two years earlier.
He had been assigned to her.
The gifts.
The accidental meetings.
His sudden interest in her job.
His obsession with her father’s belongings.
The relationship itself had been surveillance.
Khloe sat on the back steps.
“I thought he loved me.”
Dante crouched beside her.
“He targeted you.”
“I let him into my home.”
“You didn’t know.”
“I told him things.”
“He spent years manufacturing your trust. That shame belongs to him.”
Khloe looked at Dante.
The irony almost hurt.
The criminal was the first man who had explained coercion to her without blaming her for falling into it.
That evening, they unlocked the drive.
The password was the date Khloe’s mother had taught her to count money at the kitchen table.
Hundreds of files appeared.
Payments.
Shipping manifests.
Photographs.
Politicians.
Police officers.
Judges.
And one folder labeled VARGA.
Dante opened it.
His face changed.
Inside was proof that Victor had ordered the car bombing.
But beneath it was something worse.
Someone inside Dante’s organization had supplied Victor with the route.
Khloe looked at the authorization code.
“Do you recognize that?”
Dante did.
His voice became almost inaudible.
“Yes.”
“Who?”
Before he could answer, Paulie entered.
“Pier 46 is active. Victor’s people are moving.”
Dante closed the laptop.
Khloe caught his wrist.
“Who betrayed you?”
Dante looked at Paulie.
Then at her.
“My father.”
Khloe stared.
Dante’s father, Salvatore Varga, had supposedly died three years earlier.
“Why would your father kill his own son?”
“He didn’t want Marco dead.”
Dante’s expression turned hollow.
“He wanted me dead.”
At 11:52 p.m., Khloe stood inside a warehouse near Pier 46 wearing a wire.
Dante’s men surrounded the district unseen.
The plan was simple.
Khloe would exchange a duplicate drive for Maya.
But when the warehouse doors opened, Victor Kane did not appear.
Jared did.
Maya was beside him.
Alive.
Khloe took one step forward.
Then Maya screamed.
“Khloe, run!”
A gun pressed against Khloe’s spine.
Paulie’s voice sounded behind her.
“Sorry, kid.”
Khloe stopped breathing.
May you like
Across the warehouse, Jared smiled.
And somewhere in the darkness, Dante realized the man he trusted most had just betrayed him.
